 My brother put the phone to the hurricane-shuttered windows and said, "Can you hear that?" There was a sound of disbelief in his voice.
What I heard was inhuman--a wailing, screeching sound that made me think of the deadly sirens in Greek mythology. It was the howling of hurricane Katrina, her winds screaming through the Florida Keys at 100 mph.
Katrina, which was suppose to be nothing more than a 30-mph tropical storm, blew up in size and slammed into the Keys where my family lives. And that turned out to be her tame side.
That was a week before she gathered strength in the warm waters of the Gulf and devastated New Orleans, Gulfport, Biloxi and other southern coastal towns with winds clocked at 145 mph.
My brother said he had never hear winds like that, and never wanted to again. That was Katrina as a Category 1 hurricane, just a baby. By the time she traveled up the Gulf she was a monster.
Looking at the images of destruction it's clear that this is our "tsunami."
It was just a matter of time before nature leveled the playing field, hitting our country full throttle. It's a profound reminder that nature has no regard for the economic or political status of a nation. It cares little about power or wealth, poverty or servitude. But it does remind us that we are foolish and cavalier when it comes to safety. What happened last week slams home the point that we have plenty of work to do in bridging the gap between the haves and have-nots, those who can flee from harm's way and those trapped in its wake.
Help should never have taken five days to arrive. People can only survive for three to four days without water. Aid should have been heading to the disaster zone within 24 hours.
Now the cleanup begins. The water will be drained from New Orleans. We will collect the dead. And the question that will haunt us for years will be, "How many perished after the storm?" Katrina not only created the greatest U.S. natural disaster in modern times, but also left us a strong message: Be ready to survive for 72 hours without any help from the outside, perhaps even longer.
Moryt Milo is the editor of The Willow Glen Resident. She can be contacted at 400.200.1051 or mmilo@community-newspapers.com.
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